Dynamic instability response of smart composite material

Abstract

Laminated composite is common to replace traditional metals in today's industries due to its high specific strength. Shape memory alloy has been used to improve structural behaviours such as buckling, vibration and fatigue through its well- known property of shape memory effect. This ability of shape memory alloy to improve the parametric instability behaviour of laminated composite plate has not been studied in the past and as such, this study is conducted. Here, shape memory alloy wires are embedded within the outer layers of the laminated composite plates. The Mathieu-Hill equation for the parametric instability of the shape memory alloy composite plate has been developed using finite element method based on the first order shear deformation theory. The formulation is validated and parametric studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of shape memory alloy on the dynamic instability behaviour of the composite that corresponds to factors such as static load factor, thickness of the plate and boundary conditions. The study shows that shape memory alloy improves significantly the dynamic instability behaviour of the laminated composite plate by shifting the instability chart to the right. The effect of shape memory alloy can increase the frequency centre of the instability chart by more than 100 %.